


With My Fate In Your Hands

by notaredshirt



Series: He Has Me By My Heart [2]
Category: The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: Drowning, M/M, Restraints, characters in a (maybe slightly unusual) bdsm relationship, even if phil thinks he's dying, it is not a deathfic, no character was killed during this fic
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-08-31
Updated: 2013-08-31
Packaged: 2017-12-25 05:15:50
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 988
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/949043
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/notaredshirt/pseuds/notaredshirt
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Captured on a mission, Phil comforts himself by thinking about the man he loves as he dies.</p>
            </blockquote>





	With My Fate In Your Hands

**Author's Note:**

> warnings for a character who thinks he's going to die and descriptions of drowning.

Phil blinked his eyes, straining to see anything through the filthy darkness of the lake. The mission had gone belly up from the moment he’d set foot in Russia, with hired guns and too many civilians between Phil’s team and their mark. Clint and Natasha had been with him, but sometime during the race to the safe house they’d been separated and Phil had been taken down. He didn't even remember it. One minute he’d been running, the next he was on a boat, cold and wet and immobilized. He’d had enough time to recognize he was being secured with zip ties before he was grabbed -still too sluggish from the drugs they’d used to take him down to fight- and thrown off the side of the boat. 

Even the chilling shock of the water closing over his head wasn't enough to clear the drugs from his system and time slipped away from him. He’d spent years training himself to hold his breath, but without any sense of how long he’d been falling, dragged down by the weight of the cinderblock secured to his feet, he had only his own desire for air to tell him how long he’d been submerged, and it wasn't enough. Clint was out there, somewhere, looking for him, and Phil needed to survive long enough to be saved. He couldn't leave Clint alone, not so soon, not when they’d been hunting for townhomes just two days ago. It was supposed to be a place just for them- somewhere brand new to them both, a place they could make a home for themselves. 

Clinging to the meager breath he’d taken just before being thrown overboard, Phil kept that image secure in his mind. He was dying; he could feel his lungs burning with the need for air, even as his limbs had started going numb with cold, his struggles useless when he couldn't feel his fingers, and he knew that unless Clint had been right behind his captors, there was no way he was going to survive. Focusing on memories of Clint’s face, Phil closed his eyes and imagined what it would have been like to spend the rest of his life with the man he loved. 

They’d had so many plans, so many conversations about decorations and paint, about Christmases and pets and making sure Natasha approved of her room. Phil had already bought the paint for their bedroom; it was sitting in Lola’s back seat, just waiting for the sale to go through so he and Clint could take a day and get their bedroom painted. It would have resulted in sex, right there on the dropcloth, with paint and tape covering them both but satisfaction and love in every inch of the mess. 

Phil was crying. He could feel the warmth of his tears in his eyes before they were swept away by the currents of the lake. He’d planned on marrying Clint, taking a trip to Massachusetts and proposing in the same type of dingy little diner they’d been to on their first date. He’d planned on growing old with Clint, retiring when he was young enough to appreciate it and spend every day in bed with his husband, making love and getting crumbs in the sheets because they couldn't bear to get out of bed even long enough to eat. He’d planned on dying -if not old and grey, at least at Clint’s side- in their collar, worn and warm, infused with decades of their love for each other. He’d even hoped that one day they might be able to adopt, a child in need of loving parents who knew how precious childhood actually was. 

The last of his breath escaped his lips, bubbling up to tickle his nose and rustle his hair. The burning intensified as water took its place in his lungs and Phil sent a silent, desperate prayer to a god he’d stopped believing in a lifetime ago that Clint would live, that he’d find a way to survive without Phil in his life. 

A heavy, splintering pain shot across his chest and Phil gasped. His eyes opened and he smiled, a final aching image of Clint’s face swimming in front of his eyes. His throat burned, his mouth tasted of bile, and he really would have preferred his last recollection of Clint’s face to have been a smile rather than the pain-filled expression his mind had conjured, but Phil was glad he’d seen him anyway. When the black shadows teasing at the edge of his vision finally dragged him under, Phil was barely aware of it. 

\---

Pain was the first thing to register when consciousness returned. Pain and air. Phil breathed in, fast and short, his head feeling heavy with the sound of his own heartbeat and wondering briefly if all these years, his parents really had been right and there was such thing as Heaven after all. Then the smell of antiseptic filtered in and Phil realized the steady, heavy noise he’d been hearing wasn't his heart, but someone’s breath, warm against his hand. He kept his eyes shut against some too-bright light in the distance and curled his fingers. They were stiff, like he had been still for too long, and painful little tingles had started working their way up his arms, but there was only one person who would fall asleep at his bedside, and Phil needed to touch. 

With so little feeling in his arm, Phil knew he wasn't being very graceful, but when his hand flopped against Clint’s face and he snorted in his sleep before jolting awake, Phil couldn't help but laugh. What came out was little more than a hoarse chuckle, but he could hear Clint’s gasp and then his face was cupped between two warm palms and Clint’s lips pressed against his, warm and dry and chapped, and so very familiar. Phil opened his eyes and smiled.

**Author's Note:**

> This series is being written by myself and dreamingbackwards. The title of this installment was inspired by a line from Star Trek: Voyager (which I'm watching as I post this). 
> 
> The relationship between Clint and Phil is going to be bdsm, but not the kind of bdsm that most people are probably used to. If you're reading this hoping for bondage or painplay or anything like that, I suggest you find something else. It's most going to be fluffy love declarations with breathplay and collars and a few other kinks thrown in.


End file.
